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> If we lived in such a world [with no persistent writing] there would be no culture; because we couldn’t transmit across many generations what we had learned i
by skulk 2y ago
> If we lived in such a world [with no persistent writing] there would be no culture; because we couldn’t transmit across many generations what we had learned in our lifetime
Except oral traditions exist and have been passed down for thousands of years without writing.
- sorokod 2y agoExactly, the lack of persistent storage was accounted for by societal structures, e.g. tribe elders.
- irrational 2y agoBut, could the tribal elders transmit orally how to create a silicon chip, how to build a car, how to do all the other things that create the world we live in today? What is the maximum amount of data that can be stored and transmitted orally?
- thayne 2y agoThey can pass down knowledge that eventually leads to a writing system. And indeed, in a sense, the knowledge of how to read and write is still passed down "orally". Or at least directly from teacher to student.
- the_af 2y agoThat sounds like bootstrapping. You still need the rest of the "software" of culture.
- sorokod 2y agoInteresting questions to consider, what sort of social structures would maximise the amount of data retained. What would be a the size of a "tribe", what makes an elder an elder, what sort of tribes have to cooperate to create a car. Here is another one, a single person can be though of as volatile store of information. How many people and what protocols would be needed to implement redundancy and error correction?
- skulk 2y agoSounds like you'd enjoy studying Vedic Sanskrit.
- Miraltar 2y agoYou can pass some knowledge but it's limited. The more specialized you get the fewer knowledge bearer and if something happens to them you have to start from scratch again.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- glitchc 2y agoIt takes one war to destroy centuries of oral tradition. Written works have this ability where they can be transported by individuals who cannot read them.
- lelanthran 2y ago> Except oral traditions exist and have been passed down for thousands of years without writing. What makes you think this? The initial tradition of $FOO probably changed to $BAR two generations later, nevermind thousands of years.
- nonameiguess 2y agoNot only this, but non-human social animals like whales and apes show locally unique and persistent technologies and adaptations that are usually called culture by the people studying them, all without writing. Culture is certainly less enduring and more fragile without writing, but as long as knowledge can be transmitted from old to young by some means other than genetic encoding, it is also inevitable.
- mock-possum 2y agoSo the tradition goes, at least… without the comparing current written version to the ‘original’ version, it’s nearly impossible to tell how accurately our current understanding is after thousands of years. Oral tradition is just a story, it’s not a record, the way writing is.
- skulk 2y agoit looks like you and everyone else responding to me need to go read about the Vedas. They have been passed down for millenia and contain a form of error-corrrcting code that ensures fidelity. If you dispute the accuracy of this mechanism, I'm sure some Indologists would be very curious to hear more.